In 1985, Dorthaan Kirk presented Jazz-a-Thon, a marathon of live music that doubled as a fundraiser for WBGO. It attracted some of the jazz world's biggest talent.
Pianist Michel Petrucciani was both the smallest and largest that jazz had to offer that year. He was three feet tall and little more than fifty pounds, due to osteogenesis imperfecta, the rare "Glass Bones" disease. Yet he had one of the greatest commands of the piano - one that was classically virtuosic, effusively romantic, and heavily improvised. By this time, Michel had recently toured with Charles Lloyd, whom Petrucciani had nudged from retirement at California's Big Sur. Michel was now on the east coast, with his own band. Specifically, he was the Ritz in New York, with bassist Ron McClure and drummer Eliot Zigmund. Petrucciani had just signed with the recently revived Blue Note Records. In December of 1985, he recorded his extraordinary debut for the label, Pianism, followed by one of my favorites, Power of Three, a live concert from Montreux with Wayne Shorter and Jim Hall. Michel Petrucciani played until his death in 1999, age 36.Listen to "Softly as in a Morning Sunrise," from the WBGO Jazz-a-Thon.

You can also read Steve Cerra's blog post about Michel Petrucciani here.
-Josh